For over half a century I have worked as an investment banker, and then written about Wall Street, highlighting the market upheavals of 1973-4, 1987, 1999-2000, and 2007-2008 and their ramifications for the American economy,the disparity of wealth in the nation and the continuing risks of another deep global financial crisis.

Previously I was National Editor and Senior Editor at Forbes Magazine, New York Bureau Chief of The Boston Globe and Wall Street correspondent of The Economist.

The National Security Agency pays AT&TAT&T, Verizon and Sprint several hundred million dollars a year for access to 81% of all international phone calls into the US, according to a leaked inspector general’s report, which has been reported by the Washington Post, AP, and the New York Review of Books. In fact., this secret report says that “NSA maintains relationships with over 100 U.S. companies, underscoring that the U/S. has the “home-field advantage as the primary hub for worldwide communications,” the New York Review of Books reported in its August 15 issue. These secret cooperative agreements reveal that NSA pays surveillance fees to telcos and phone companies were first made public by Edward Snowden, the former NSA administrator, now resident in Russia.

AT&T charges $325 for each activation fee and $10 a day to monitor the account, according to the AP. Verizon charges $775 per tapping for the first month and then $500 a month thereafter, according to the Associated Press today. The article reported that MicrosoftMicrosoft, YahooYahoo and Google refused to say how much they charged to allow the government to tap into emails and other non-telephonic communications.

In a separate report the Washington Post reported that NSA pays the telcos roughly $300 million annually for access to information on their communications; where and when they occurred, the identity of the person called and how long the conversation lasted. This surveillance is accomplished by tapping into “high volume circuits and packet-switched networks.” The ability to obtain this information was authorized by the US Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, passed in 1994 by the Clinton administration.

While $300 million for giant telephone companies is only a slight fraction of their overall revenues, it is quite a shocking revelation to think that the telcos consumers pay every month to hook them up with the world are also being paid by the U.S. government to maintain watch over our daily communication whether over wired instruments or unwired communications equipment like I pads and cell phones. Snowden recently released information by means of a slide which revealed that the government ” was able to access real-time-data on the live voice, text, e-mail, or internet chat services, in addition to analyzing stored data.” (like your Facebook account)

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Wow, no wonder they don’t put up a real fight when it comes to spying on their own customers. NSA sure puts out a lot of money, pays off a lot of companies to do their illegal spying. Like the saying goes, follow the money.

These thing were likely already going on before Obama took office. Remember that it’s 9/11 that was the main reason for all this “security”, so it’s likely that these actions were done even more and to a much larger scale right after 9/11 for some time.

I do not know if Obama himself would be able to shut down these actions and even if he was the whole security angle makes it easy to ignore the downsides.

There would also be another question. How much did Obama even know of this. It’s not hard to believe that Obama would not be fully informed of what is going on at the NSA. The NSA and FBI and most of the government departments don’t need to share every little detail of every “program” that is running. There are probably chains of higher ups that know what is going on and with every chain a little detail is possibly lost.

Having said all that. Yes, if Obama does know he and everyone else that does know about the programs, need to be thrown out.

Also on a somewhat connected note. The government and the news were asking how history will treat Snowden. I think from all these info we have received from him, I think history will be very kind to him. So he told the AMERICAN people that the NSA was spying on them (not on terrorists, but on them) and so doing, harmed the program(s), while at the same time informing the public of the governments distrust of the people.

None of the programs that Snowden according to the government harmed have actually been shut down, so there has been no harm done by Snowden’s actions, only good. Let’s hope the people will react to it and show that we do not want this.

The line from security/freedom has long been passed and we are currently deep in the mud in security territory, time to push back the government to a more balanced territory.

It’s sad to see freedom diminish by more laws that Congress creates. What’s worse is that we are sold to government for marketing purposes. Since when did national security justify spying on every American? Shouldn’t these systems be setup to filter or focus on possible threats? I believe that the NSA and Congress have too much power that needs to be taken away or America will be sold to the highest bidder. (If it hasn’t already)